Eddie watched him rack the balls and then he said, “You like to play a game or two?”
“Sure, I like to play. What game?” He slammed the rack on the table and began piling the balls fiercely into it. His hands were huge, strong-looking, and rough, and he handled the balls as if they were golf balls.
“Is one-pocket all right?”
“Fine.” The man fished vigorously in his pocket and withdrew a half dollar. He threw this in the air, over the table. “Which side comes up?” he said.
“Tails.”
It came up heads; Davis would break. In one-pocket, unlike straight pool, the break is an advantage; with it you can nudge a good many balls over to the side of the table where your scoring pocket is, and if you know how to do it right you can invariably leave the other man perfectly safe—without a possible shot.
The man began chalking his cue and said, “You want to play for some money? A few dollars?”
Eddie grinned. “Ten?”
The old man raised his eyebrows, which were gray and very shaggy. “Fine.”
When he got up to the head of the table to break the balls he bent down stiffly, pumped his cue stick vigorously several times, stopped, aimed, pumped again, and then shot. His concentration was so great that a large soft vein, purplish, stood out on his forehead. The break was very good, although not perfect.
Eddie decided that, from the start, there would be no point in playing down his own game. He was not certain, anyway, that he would be able to win even by playing his best. There would be no point in throwing off, underplaying himself, just to set up a big game or two that he might lose.
So he played carefully, using his open-hand bridge and his awkward hold on the cue, and shot the best that he could. Any ten-dollar bills that he could pick up he could use. He played cautiously, making most of his shots defensive, trying for a ball only when he was certain he could make it, and he beat the man by a close score—eight to six.
They played another and Eddie won that. The man was good, but wild—and not smart enough. He lost the third, but won the one afterward. When they had finished that game, Davis grinned at him and said, “How come you shoot flat hand? You sure too goddamn good to shoot like that all the time.”
“I hurt my hands. In an accident.”
They kept on playing and after a few hours Eddie had won ninety dollars. But his hands were beginning to ache, and he began to shoot stiffly, afraid that he would put pressure on one of his thumbs and the pain would stab through it. The old man’s vigor did not abate: he was one of the professionals like Minnesota Fats—although not nearly as good—in his tireless, consistently good game. And he was funny. Once, in the middle of a game, Davis was bending rigidly over the cue ball at the end of the table, concentrating, his forehead vein purplish, on a difficult shot, when suddenly he drew back and stood erect, his great hands on his hips, staring toward the center of the table. Eddie looked and saw a small black insect walking unconcernedly across the green, in the line of the old man’s shot. The thing was the size of a gnat, with no wings.
Davis was staring at it, his eyes bulging apoplectically. Finally, the bug stopped, turned around, and began walking back the way it had come.
Davis glared. “You little black son of a bitch,” he said, “You had your goddamn chance, you sure had.” Then, suddenly, he swooped forward, and with the small end of his cue stick extended, delivered a very rapid series of short taps, as if trying to hammer the bug through the table. Then he bent forward and, with deliberation, flicked the corpse off the table, using a massive thumb and forefinger. “That’s teach you good, you son of a bitch,” he said.
And playing him, Eddie slowly became aware of something he had not been aware of about himself for a long time: of how much he enjoyed playing pool. Things of that kind, things that simple, can be forgotten easily—especially in all of the questions of money and gambling, talent and character, born winner and born loser—and they can come as a shock. Eddie loved to play pool. There was a kind of power, a kind of brilliant co-ordination of mind and of skill, that could give him as much pleasure, as much delight in himself and in the things that he did, as anything else in the world. Some men never feel this way about anything; but Eddie had felt it, as long as he could remember, about pool. He loved the hard sounds the balls made, loved the feel of the green wool cloth under his hand, the other hand gently holding the butt of his cue, tapping leather on ivory.
And then, after he had won three games in a row, the big man grinned broadly, toothily, at him and said, “I quit you now. You too goddamn good.”
“Sure,” Eddie said, grinning. He took the final ten from him and, putting it in his billfold, hardly noticed the tugging of acute pain in his hands. Everything, it seemed, about this game had been perfect: they had even quit at the right time. He was not certain; but he figured that he had won at least a hundred and a half. He could use it.
“You want a drink?” he said to the other man, affably. They had drunk nothing but coffee during the playing.
“Sure.” His voice boomed out again, like it had done at first, “You buy me a martini?”
“Be glad to,” Eddie said.
They went to the back room and washed their hands, getting the grime and chalk off them. The big man washed as he did everything else, like a zealot. “What’s your name, anyway?” he said. “You shoot so goddamn good I should know your name. For next time.”
Eddie laughed. “Felson,” he said. “Eddie Felson.”
“Eddie Felson?” The big man thought about this for a moment. “Sure.” In the little washroom, his voice could have broken mirrors, cracked porcelain. “Somebody told me about you. Fast Eddie, is that it?”
“That’s it.”
“Say” He held out a huge hand. “My name’s Bill Davis. From Des Moines, Iowa.”
Eddie took the hand apprehensively, afraid the man would squeeze it. But he shook gently, aware, apparently, of the soreness. “You’re one damn fine pool player. When you get your hands fixed up you must be one of the best.”
“Thanks,” Eddie said.
“Maybe I should buy you a drink.”
“That’s okay, I can afford it,” Eddie said, grinning.
The martini glass seemed lost in Davis’ hand. He gulped it and then set the glass down on the counter. For a moment Eddie was afraid he would slam it down as he had the pool triangle, slivering glass everywhere. “You know,” he said, “if I had the chance to learn how to shoot pool when I was a boy I would be one damn fine good pool player myself.”
“You shoot good right now,” Eddie said.
“Sure. Sure, I shoot good. I beat most people I play. But I’m an old man. I was an old man first time in my life I saw a pool table. Fifteen years ago. First year I come to the States to live.”
“You mean there aren’t any pool tables where you come from?”
“I don’t know. Maybe some. But in Albania—I come from Albania fifteen goddamn years ago—I’m always a working man. Mechanic. I save my money and come here to buy a business. I buy a garage. No goddamn good—nobody makes money in a garage. So I buy a poolroom, cheap, in Des Moines, Iowa. Now I’m sixty-eight years old and I’m just learning to play this goddamn game of pool.” Then he grinned, his big, horsy teeth flashing, “But I like it. It’s the best goddamn game there is.”